Flying mentor fondly recalled

2:41 AM,
Oct. 10, 2008

C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson takes first lady Eleanor Roosevelt for a flight in the early 1940s.

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TUSKEGEE -- What little boy wouldn't jump at the chance to live on a military training site?

The sons of the Tuskegee Airmen's chief flying instructor and mentor, C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson, had such an opportunity. Charles Anderson his brother, Alfred, and the rest of the family lived in one of two houses at Moton Field, a training site for the first African-American squadron.

"It was a little boy's paradise. My cousins and I would get out there and play for hours and hours," said Charles Anderson, who now lives in Greensboro, N.C. "There were a lot of good times. We even had an old bomber out there ...